CrimD wins recognition in microbiological circles

by Joseph McClain
| May 10, 2010

CrimD, William & Mary's favorite
bacteriophage, has become the microbiological equivalent of an Oscar nominee.

"We were contacted by the University of
Pittsburgh-Graham Hatfull's laboratory," said Margaret Saha of William &
Mary's biology department. "They consider our ‘Oscar nominee' so interesting
and so unique that we have the opportunity to collaborate with them."

CrimD was discovered last year by a group of
freshmen participating in a special research experience for first-year students
sponsored by the Science Education Alliance of the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute (HHMI). Drawn from the mud of campus landmark Crim Dell, CrimD was
determined to be a previously unknown variety of bacteriophage, a group of
viruses that infect bacteria.

Some 30 first-year students were involved in
last year's HHMI phage lab, working with a faculty team comprising Saha and her
fellow microbiologists Mark Forsyth and Kurt Williamson. Hatfull is an HHMI
Professor at Pitt and has been interested in CrimD since the virus was
sequenced.

There are a couple of things that make CrimD
stand out from the crowd of new phages discovered in HHMI phage seminars at
dozens of universities. As phages don't reproduce sexually, they aren't part of
the Linnean "family-genus-species" classification, and, instead, are grouped in
clusters.

"That's what makes CrimD so interesting;
it's not in any previously existing cluster," Williamson said. "It forms its
own with a phage called TM4 that was sequenced many years ago-and just hanging
out by itself, unclustered. TM4, CrimD and this other phage called Angelica
have formed their own cluster."

There's more than academic interest in CrimD
and its cluster mates. They all infect different species of mycobacteria, a
family that includes the causative agents of a group of diseases that include
tuberculosis and leprosy.

"There is a lot of excitement that CrimD
might infect Mycobacterium tuberculosis and therefore have real
benefit as a therapeutic agent or, more likely, doing genetic manipulations to
help find better treatments of TB," Williamson explained.

The three William & Mary biologists are
working with six alumni of last year's freshman phage lab. Forsyth explained
that the work is being done at Pitt because Hatfull's lab has the Biosafety
Level 3 designation necessary to work with pathogens, such as tuberculosis,
that are dangerous to humans.

The team at William and Mary will continue
to work with CrimD, cleaning up rough spots in the sequencing of the virus's
DNA and re-annotating the gene groups blueprinted in the genetic sequencing.
The students involved are Allison Perz, Hilary Whelan, Kobie Gordon, Jillian Walton,
Arrykka Jackson and Jordan Bonz Hudson.

"The students are doing all the work.
Everything! They're doing the re-annotating. They will do the experiment," Saha
said. "And we're just overseeing it."